Brilliant ... The author brings enough humor to the proceedings to prevent the horror from becoming too all-consuming while keeping the pages flying with a thrilling plot and a moving examination of loneliness, desire, and hope in the wake of trauma. Byron proves an exciting new voice in horror fiction.
Byron has rich veins to mine...but she misses opportunities to fully delve into these ideas and all their complications. The supporting characters are thinly drawn, the pacing is uneven, and the narrator’s disaffection and reluctance to take concrete action in the face of escalating violence may emotionally distance some readers from even the novel’s most disquieting sequences. Creepy and crawly but not quite hair-raising, the book struggles to find its footing as either literary fiction or horror.
